Friday, August 27, 2010

Stewart Wallis of London’s New Economics Foundation (www.neweconomics.org) says of Peter Victor that he is one of the few economists who is describing the practical steps needed to transition from our current economic system to one that is more sustainable. Wallis says we will need more economists like Victor to shape a new economy.

There’s nothing like a good crisis to make us rethink old ideas. The depression of the 1930s led to the rejection of the prevailing idea that unemployment would right itself if only people would work for lower wages. Governments could do very little to help. These ideas were overthrown by experience and by the invention of modern macro economics by British economist, John Maynard Keynes. By the end of World War II, most Western governments had adopted Keynesian economic policies designed to ensure that total expenditures were sufficient to maintain full employment.

Keynesian economists soon discovered that full employment today meant a bigger economy tomorrow because some of the investment expenditures required to keep unemployment down: on infrastructure, buildings and equipment, also expanded the productive capacity of the economy. So does an expanding population and labour force. Initially, governments pursued economic growth to meet the more pressing concern of maintaining full employment, but this soon changed. In the 1950s, economic growth became the number one economic policy objective of governments and all others, such as productivity, innovation, free trade, competitiveness, immigration, even education, became a means to that end.

Until a year or so ago all seemed to be going reasonably well. Then came the breakdown in the financial sector followed quickly by a recession that through globalization, spread further and faster than swine flu. Now governments are congratulating themselves for acting together to stimulate spending to get the economies back on course, much as Keynes might have recommended. But times have changed since his day. World population has increased almost three times, world economic output has increased ten times and with this massive expansion of the human presence on earth, we are confronting limits to the availability of cheap energy, to fresh water, and to the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. At the same time we are destroying the habitat of numerous species of flora and fauna and the security of our own food supplies is threatened.

It is time to rethink the old idea that the solution to all our problems lies in the incessant expansion of the economy. Rich countries like Canada should explore alternatives, especially if poorer countries are to benefit from economic growth for a while in a world increasingly constrained by biophysical limits. Some deny or simply ignore these limits and argue that economic growth in rich countries is necessary to stimulate growth in poorer ones. Others say that with ‘green’ growth we can expand economic output as we reduce the demands we place on nature through more efficient production, better designed products, fewer goods and more services, compact urban forms, and organic agriculture. While these measures may well help in a transition they are an unlikely prescription for the long term. What is required is a radical rethinking of our economies and their relation to the natural world.

Although no 21st century Keynes has emerged to prepare the intellectual ground for such a change in thinking, we do have a body of knowledge built up over many decades and now thriving under the name of ‘ecological economics’. Ecological economists understand economies to be subsystems of the earth ecosystem, sustained by a flow of materials and energy from and back to the larger system in which they are embedded. It is understandable that when these flows were small relative to the earth they could be ignored, as they have been in much of mainstream economics. Economists are not alone in treating the economy as a self-contained, free standing system largely independent of its environmental setting. It is a widely held view that environmental protection is just one among multiple competing interests to be traded off against the economy. And anyway, this mainstream perspective teaches that if resource and environmental constraints are encountered, scarcities will be signalled by increases in prices that will induce a variety of beneficial changes in behaviour and technology. Should this system of scarcity, price, response fail then economists can estimate ‘shadow’ prices which can be imposed directly through taxes or used indirectly through policies based on cost-benefit analysis to fix the problem.

To ecological economists, this is an inadequate response to the myriad problems of resource depletion, environmental contamination and habitat destruction confronting humanity in the 21st century. They question the pursuit of endless economic growth and contemplate a very different kind of future.

In my own work, I have examined whether and under what conditions a country like Canada could have full employment, no poverty, much reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and maintain fiscal balance, without relying on economic growth. Using a comparatively simple model of the Canadian economy I have explored scenarios in which these objectives are met. The ingredients for success include a shorter work year to reduce unemployment yet retain the advantages of technological progress, a carbon price to discourage greenhouse gas emissions, and more generous anti-poverty programs.

In such an economy, success would not be judged by the rate of economic growth but by more meaningful measures of personal and community well-being. We would adjust to strict limits on our use of materials, energy, land and waste, guided by prices that provide more accurate information about real rather than contrived scarcities. We would enjoy more services and fewer but more durable and repairable products, and we would value use over status when deciding what to buy. Rampant consumerism would be history, advertising would be more informative and less persuasive, and new technologies would be better screened to avoid problems to be fixed later, if at all. Infrastructure, buildings and equipment would be more efficient in their use of energy and we would think and act more locally and less globally. With more free time at our disposal we would educate ourselves and our children for life not just work.

Is all this simply wishful thinking of a sort that flourishes in troubled times? I think not. The undercurrent of discontent with modern life is rich with ideas for a better future, one that is not dependent on economic growth. For example, in March of this year the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission delivered its report ‘Prosperity without Growth?’ to the British Government endorsing and amplifying many of the ideas expressed here. The Centre for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy based in the USA has obtained over 3000 signatures on its position statement designed to help change the goal of the economy from growth to sustainability. At the local level, Transition Towns has spread in less than four years from the UK to many countries including Canada, to raise awareness of sustainable living and to build local resilience in response to the combined threats of peak oil and climate change. Even mainstream economists are moving with the tide. Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow said last year: “It is possible that the US and Europe will find that…either continued growth will be too destructive to the environment and they are too dependent on scarce natural resources, or that they would rather use increasing productivity in the form of leisure.” Let’s add Canada to the list and go from there.

Economist Peter A. Victor is Professor in Environmental Studies at York University and author of Managing without Growth. Slower by Design, not Disaster, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008. “Bigger isn’t Better” first appeared in the Ottawa Citizen (www.ottawacitizen.com).

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The mission of ICLEI USA's new carbon neutral publication, Planet Earth magazine, is to highlight today's environmental challenges and innovative solutions around the globe at the local level.

Never before has the phrase, 'think globally, act locally' been more relevant; Local governments are recognizing that their communities are often the first to feel the impacts of worlwide issues such as climate change and they are taking their responsibility to the planet in stride.

In the US, cities, towns and counties are taking the lead to address climate change, energy independence and sustainability. And they have turned these challenges into opportunities: Their pioneering solutions are helping to make their communities cleaner, more economically prosperous and more liveable.

Planet Earth captures the ideas, best practices and success stories of ICLEI's U.S. Local government members—more than 600 strong—and highlights the global impact of thie locally-based revolution.

In short, Planet Earth strives to convey the idea that 'local action moves the world' into words and images.

On the balcony of a traditional Vietnamese nha san house, overlooking a beautifully tended garden, the words float, a revelation. Spring breeze filters through the night sky, easing them into the back of my mind for future works, speeches. For the next day’s remarks to a group of architects and building professionals in Ho Chi Minh City.

Traditional houses, updated with glass and concrete footings, bound the garden. The speaker is a wise man. A Japanese-Vietnamese who studied architecture in college, with a sensibility formed by both countries. Nguyen Tri Dung sits across from me and says he created this one-hectare garden--perhaps the largest private green space in Ho Chi Minh City, where the opportunity cost for this expanse of paths and trees is likely in the millions of dollars--for his own philosophy. And to show his visitors, mostly businessmen from Japan and around the world, his dream. To show them that he understands.

Understands what?

Zen and the Art of Climate Change Adaptation

Vietnam is drowning in concrete and water. By the year 2050, the expected rise in global sea level will have inundated much of Ho Chi Minh City. No one talks or thinks about this much, as its enormity overwhelms most conversations. Still, the waters rise. The rains intensify. And once a week in HCMC, flood waters a meter high creep up onto the streets, cut into slapping waves by cars and buses that plow through them.

According to Ho Long Phi, the deputy director of HCMC’s flood control commission, this is not due to rising seas-not yet. Under darkening skies at an HCMC café, our coffees pushed to the side and long forgotten, he points to a series of graphs showing the rise in river levels and in rainfall. “It is higher rainfall,” he says. “And urbanization.” By the latter he means concrete. Low-lying areas long used for drainage of HCMC’s rivers are being filled and capped with concrete. Embankments narrow rivers and canals. With routes to flow and drain increasingly limited, the water gathers on the streets.

Current proposals call for HCMC to fight the water with increasingly complex polder systems, which reclaim and protect submerged land with dykes and pumps. Ho Long Phi has another idea. “Control the urban planning,” he says, sketching out a rough plan showing open spaces and retaining pools around buildings. “Decrease the impermeable surfaces. Then add a better drainage system and maybe pump water into aquifers.” That may work for the next 20 years or so. But when the seas rise a meter? Will it be enough?

First, the good side of polder systems--in the Netherlands, the certainty of inundation upon their failure made it necessary for the water boards controlling them to separate from other political systems. These boards, based on practicality and compromise, are sometimes known as Holland’s oldest democracies and evolved into an actual political system, the Polder Model, that brings groups with separate interests into agreement and cooperation. Vietnam could use a similar system for urban sustainability and climate change adaptation. A meritocracy of the country’s brightest and most dedicated souls, its true dreamers and geniuses, to face the enormous problem of its drowning cities. Not only architects, but city planners and managers, developers and engineers, and especially communities, must all have a hand in this great urban re-imagining.

For the truth, now that we’ve seen their good side, is that polders will not save Ho Chi Minh City. The great false belief of the post-Industrial Revolution West is that ever-improving technology will always hold back, subdue, and conquer nature. It persists in most quarters of advanced industrialized societies: surely a miracle technology will always come along when we need it. Unfortunately, we’re now seeing nature’s great counterattack--or, in the words of prophetic scientist James Lovelock, who posited decades ago that the world functions as a single living organism he called “Gaia,” this is the revenge of Gaia1 . Perhaps reaction would be a better word, as Gaia is a system and by no means warlike--only misunderstood and abused.

If this sounds like so much New Age tripe, other realities may be substituted. The economics of protecting a deltaic city in a developing nation, already deluged once a week from a rapidly rising sea, at an initial cost easily in the tens of billions of dollars, might persuade. As Vietnam wrestles with the agricultural loss of the Mekong Delta and the relocation of millions of people2, heroic engineering works that consume a significant portion of the nation’s budget will be unlikely.

The answer? Ho Long Phi, with his tight, meditative clusters of numbers and graphs, has it right: don’t fight nature. Invite it back into the cities.

We Had to Destroy the Country in Order to Save It

Vietnam is gifted with natural abundance. Fertile river deltas, lush mountains--the familiar litany. Foreign travelers, when not being accosted by smiling women in conical hats who offer their burdened baskets for a quick souvenir photo, enjoy these vistas (themselves under heavy stress from deforestation, water pollution, and so on), but often seem bewildered once they arrive in Hanoi, the other major city of Vietnam. This once charming city, scarred by countless years of war but always triumphant, now faces a truly implacable foe--unrestrained development.

Having recently annexed several neighboring provinces, the city will swell to three times its current area in the next twenty years or so (it has grown from one million people in 1986 to between four and five million today, its area at least doubling). Hanoi is no longer content to be a charming national capital of ancient banyan trees and sparkling lakes. In its confused industrial adolescence, it (the city itself, by all appearances in some agony, should not be blamed) dreams of becoming a localized version of Singapore, sleek and luxurious. Hanoi is many wonderful things, but thankfully it has never been and likely will never be “sleek.” Yet this is the vision. A megacity, sprawling across the Red River and holding ten million and more in a desert of concrete, glass, and steel.

What type of buildings will rise in the former rice fields? The architecture of Hanoi, its evolution and many layers, has been maligned and discussed elsewhere in rich detail3. Suffice to say, the brutalism of the remaining Soviet architecture, the endless metal-roof kitsch of the “self-built” housing, the blankly “Asian” high-rise apartments, and the climatically inappropriate glass boxes could all use a bold renewing vision (that uses and maintains some of the distinct cultural forms, such as the tube house4).

Yet Hanoi is trapped in several vicious cycles. The richer it gets, the more people it attracts. The more rural migrants arrive, the more the countryside dies. As rural areas collapse, more people flood into Hanoi. Livable cities are rarely those with exponential population growth. Traffic becomes unbearable. As does the air5. The city spreads out, rolling concrete, brick, and asphalt out before it. The green of the spring rice paddies, so vibrant it seems alive, disappears in a cloud of gray dust and red metal roofs. One feels lucky to ever hear bird song.

It must be said--Vietnam’s urbanization and development to date, essentially a process of moving workers from farms to factories, is widely praised. Per-capita income has risen quickly, though not evenly, and poverty has been greatly reduced by most measures, though it persists. Hunger, a daily reality for most urban Vietnamese in the hardscrabble (though not unhappy) period from 1975-1986, is now largely confined to the rural poor and pockets of urban despair. No one who’s met a child without food to eat will downplay this change. Yet the question haunting the nation is whether it necessitated the degradation, even destruction, of immense parts of the nation’s natural resources6 . Can a poor country develop while preserving open spaces, rivers, soil, and air?

Today we know this is not a question of aesthetics, but a moral issue. To writer and naturalist Aldo Leopold, a father of American environmentalism, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” Can Hanoi do this? Can its neighborhoods and buildings “get right”? Is it possible to grow this jewel of a city, with its thumping heart of 36 ancient streets, into a model of low-carbon development and ecological balance?

Not only possible, it is necessary. Greening is now a matter of survival7 . Only through the large-scale introduction of eco-effective design8 can Hanoi meet the speeding challenges of this century. (The same goes for HCMC, though it will also likely require a phased retreat from the sea.) Why is green the only solution? Because it is the only elegant one, addressing climate change, ecological and environmental destruction, human and social well-being, resource scarcity, and economic constraints.

It’s not high-end, LEED Platinum, Norman Foster9 green we are talking about here. High-tech green will be reserved mainly for the offices, homes, and playgrounds of the most prosperous. The rest of us, most of Hanoi, will have to do with guerilla green, community green--a type developed over more than a thousand years of Vietnamese culture, based on intelligent passive design and landscaping10. It will draw on Feng Shui (geomancy), still a large influence on Vietnamese design, and common sense--a term not to be used around anthropologists and an influence on hardly anyone these days.

We must also change our lives, the real barrier to change: unlearn the habits of consumption taught by television, peel away the thin layer of materialist dreams pasted over the ancient yearning for peace, family, friendship, and natural abundance. People and societies out of balance change when animals and trees reappear in bleak downtowns, when relentless concrete is replaced with something more forgiving and human. This is no hippy pipe dream. It’s biophilia11. We’re talking about permeable pavements, open pavers. Green roofs and open space. You get LEED credits for them. They are real.

Smaller cities often get it first. In the US, towns such as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and even Chicago--second or third cities--moved ahead while no one was looking. “First cities” are lumbering and unwieldy. Their politics are sclerotic, land is very expensive, and change is nearly impossible. New York is calcified; most people living there wouldn’t have it any other way. Vietnam likely faces the same problem. Bringing large-scale sustainability into its two dominant urban centers will be difficult.

This is not an entirely bad thing. By concentrating on its minor cities, especially provincial centers, Vietnam could stabilize its rural population and staunch the flow of migrants into the cities. Architecture shapes our inner life; creating beautiful, modern small cities and towns--sustainable, livable jewels--will help restore communities beyond the center and prevent the kind of rural collapse the US saw during its urbanization.

Balance. In eco-effective design we always return to balance and harmony. Vietnam can still regain them, wrench its development from the carbon-intensive path of concrete jungles surrounded by desolate, machine-farmed hinterlands. By weaving its natural world into its cities, and its urban sophistication into rural provinces, it can anticipate the carbon-neutral age. First, however, it must turn from its received notion of a city--the gleaming 20th Century metropolis, already outdated, increasingly obsolete, and soon untenable.

What is the alternative vision?

A (Living) Machine for Living In

A great irony of global warming is its intensification by air conditioning. Cooling ourselves, we fry the planet. Is this hyperbole or hysteria? Let’s make a quick detour to the recent, shocking loss of nearly half the Arctic ice cap. It must be seen to be appreciated12. Three years ago, glaciologists believed Arctic sea ice might disappear during summer months by 2080. Then came the great melt of 2007, when forty percent of the ice cap (measured against its 1979-2000 average size) disappeared. Now scientists predict the Arctic could be ice-free by 2013 or sooner. The headline progression is startling:

Though it did not disappear in the summer of 2008, neither did the ice rebound. Any summer now could be the first iceless Arctic season for at least three million years (and perhaps 55 million)14. The highly reflective ice cap plays a vital role as a global cooling mechanism. Its demise is another indication that we have pushed the Earth out of its familiar glacial-interglacial climate oscillation, a constant for all of human history.

That is, our children and ourselves will witness a global climate system no humans beings have known before.

Now the trick is to soften, and prepare for, impacts surely coming. (In climate change circles this is called mitigation and adaptation.) We must begin in the cities. Our use of cities, the lives we lead in them, have melted the ice so quickly our predictions cannot keep up. Population is a factor, but without electric lights, air conditioning, cars and planes, our six billion would not affect global climate, disastrous as we may be for ecosystems. Our systems, particularly our shelters and transport, simply must change. Nations not yet fully urbanized must recognize that a fundamental urban shift is coming.

Mitigation and adaptation, the two approaches to climate change, dovetail into what we can call “Green Resilience:” the enhanced ability of sustainable buildings and urban areas to survive climatic shocks, economic dislocation, or resource scarcity. There is not a revolutionary idea. We expect a self-reliant farm, designed around the traditional Vietnamese command of water, trees, and structure for microclimatic benefits, to fare better during an intense storm, power outage, flood, and/or heat wave that might paralyze a city, emptying its markets and store shelves.

The goal is to get this self-reliance, use of nature’s services for basic needs, back into the cities. A designer must be aware not only of energy performance, but also how her building handles the extreme scenarios above. This is “passive survivability,” the ability of a building to remain viable without power and under climatic stress15. It might also be called “resilience,” an ecological concept currently of great interest to social and physical scientists. The resilience of a shelter or an urban neighborhood would depend on the “magnitude of disturbance needed to fundamentally disrupt the system16.”

For example, with effective passive design principles, buildings can buffer heat without mechanical systems. They use less air-conditioning, which decreases the urban heat island effect (rejected heat has to go somewhere17), resulting in cooler cities and even less air conditioning. The same principles can be applied to entire neighborhoods and districts, helping them resist disturbance from heat18.

In another example, setting aside urban land for community gardens and urban agriculture, as the Cubans did in their 1990s crisis19, increases food security. Emissions related to shipping food decrease, slowing global warming. The need to turn forests into farms also decreases, saving valuable carbon sinks and ecological havens. Open areas for drainage and storage ease the urban floods now ravaging Vietnam and reduce the heat island effect, again reducing air conditioning. Lightly treated wastewater can irrigate and fertilize these green spaces, conserving fresh water supplies, and preserving rivers without expensive wastewater treatment plants. The nature we miss instinctively returns to our lives, mitigating the city’s stressful tempos.

Everything is connected. The use of air-conditioning produces vicious cycles--bad results feed worse ones. The application of deep green principles in urban settings, however, can spawn “virtuous” cycles. Again this may sound like the magical thinking of a wishful tree-hugger, but there’s a good reason for the difference in dynamics.

Our greatest modern challenges stem from our alterations to the natural world--primarily the pollution and depletion of resources. In the phenomenon known as “overshoot and collapse,” unchecked populations either use up their resources or saturate their environment with pollutants (overshoot). Either case results in a population collapse. Only if a world’s resources are infinite, if it can absorb an infinite amount of garbage, effluent, and emissions, can infinite growth, our modern organizing urban principle, be sustainable. So we need to do three things: use less, pollute less, and brace for impacts.

This is why sustainability--a word so weakened, abused, and overused it needs to be put out of its misery--creates virtuous cycles. Nature’s designs and systems are the most efficient, non-polluting, and robust on earth. By tapping them, we receive many co-benefits. Trees are a good example. Architects have long known the benefits of planting trees for thermal comfort and aesthetics. Yet they also soak up and break down pollution (including carbon dioxide, our greatest concern); they shade concrete and bricks, easing the heat island effect; they control erosion, improve soil, and absorb water; they act as wind breaks; they provide food and building materials. All for free.

So why have we exiled them from Hanoi and HCMC? For the same reason we exiled nearly all nature from our cities--we didn’t know any better. We don’t have that excuse anymore. Even Le Corbusier, emblematic of inorganic machine-age design, went from “A house is a machine for living in” to “Life is right and the architect is wrong.” We can even repurpose his early statement for our own purposes. A house, or a building, should be a living machine, connected to its neighbors in a living system.

The idea of living machines is not new. John Todd and his New Alchemy Institute engineered living systems on household scales to produce food, treat wastewater, and provide clean water simultaneously. The “biotecture” movement uses natural systems and recycled waste materials to produce self-sufficient homes. Canadian research on the health and indoor air quality benefits of “living walls,” plant installations ranging in size from a few square meters to multiple stories, is nearly fifteen years old. Along with this biocomponent engineering and ecological design, we have the biomimicry researchers, who look to nature for design instruction, as do the permaculture practitioners who seek harmony between human and natural systems. In Portland, Oregon, the first “living building” is being constructed . This is some of the most hopeful, exciting work around

Someday a house will act more like a tree. A shelter that provides. “Root” pipes might water it and keep it cool. Climbing plants shield it from sun. Interrelated living systems provide food and treat waste. Weaving ecology into engineered systems is likely our most efficient means of protecting urban areas from the worst effects of climate change.

This movement can work with the wisdom of traditional Vietnamese architecture, reviving a threatened culture and nation. This is my reply to Nguyen Tri Dung and Ho Long Phi, to James Lovelock and all the thinkers and visionaries who work to preserve the best of the old world while steadily creating the new. An endlessly elaborating, cleverly articulated world that substitutes maturity for endless growth.

This is my dream of Vietnam.

Jalel Sager
3200 words
Copyright 2009
----------

The writer is the founding director of the Vietnam Green Building Council and studies green cities and climate change adaptation in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California-Berkeley.

With over half of the world’s population now living in dense urban centers, it is critical that real solutions are discovered for these increasingly unhealthy environments. By applying permaculture principles to our urban designs, we can develop new techniques and (de)pave the road to a sustainable future.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence

Published in November 1996 (revised 2004, 2009) by NAAEE, Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence provides a set of recommendations for developing and selecting environmental education materials. These guidelines aim to help developers of activity guides, lesson plans, and other instructional materials produce high quality products, and to provide educators with a tool to evaluate the wide array of available environmental education materials. Developed through a process of critique and consensus, the Guidelines are grounded in a common understanding of effective environmental education. Over 1,000 practitioners and scholars in the field (e.g., classroom teachers, education administrators, environmental scientists, curriculum developers) participated in the review and development of this document. A companion publication, Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence - The Workbook is also available on line to help educators apply The Materials Guidelines (The Workbook is also available in PDF). Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence points out six key characteristics of high quality environmental education materials. For each of these characteristics, there are listed some guidelines for environmental education materials to follow. Finally, each guideline in accompanied by several indicators listed under the heading "What to Look For." These indicators suggest ways of gauging whether the materials being evaluated or developed follow the guidelines. The Guidelines for Excellence offer a way of judging the relative merit of different materials, a standard to aim for in developing new materials, and a set of ideas about what well-rounded environmental education curriculum might look like.

The EE Collection - Volume 1

The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators
Volume 1

The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators (updated 2004) is designed to help educators find curricula, multimedia resources, and other educational materials that can enhance teaching environmental education in a variety of settings. It is hoped that this resource guide will assist educators as they plan, develop, and implement creative and effective environmental education programs.

Curriculum guides and other educational materials included in The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators were evaluated by teams of classrooms teachers, content experts, and environmental educators. The materials were evaluated using the Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence developed by the North American Association for Environmental Education.

The write-ups of the materials included in this document were designed to point out the variety of factors an educator may wish to consider when deciding which materials are most appropriate for a particular group of students and how those materials might be used most effectively.

Table of Contents

The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators, Volume 1
The synergy between the various parts of the primary Reviews - the summary of reviewer comments, the subjects, the brief description of the materials, and the reviewers' quotes - creates the richness and integrity of these reviews. It is strongly recommended that educators read both pages of each review in order to take in the full flavor of the materials. The "Reviews in Brief" do not contain a substantial teacher's guide and are therefore presented in a shorter format. These resources were reviewed using the same rigorous guidelines as the longer reviews. Click on the resource titles to see a brief description of each curriculum or resource and the review summary [PDF]

The EE Collection - Volume 2

The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators
Volume 2

The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators (updated 2004) is designed to help educators find curricula, multimedia resources, and other educational materials that can enhance teaching environmental education in a variety of settings. It is hoped that this resource guide will assist educators as they plan, develop, and implement creative and effective environmental education programs

Curriculum guides and other educational materials included in The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators were evaluated by teams of classrooms teachers, content experts, and environmental educators. The materials were evaluated using the Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence developed by the North American Association for Environmental Education.

The write-ups of the materials included in this document were designed to point out the variety of factors an educators may wish to consider when deciding which materials are most appropriate for a particular group of students and how those materials might be used most effectively.

Table of Contents

The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators, Volume 2

The synergy between the various parts of the primary Reviews - the summary of reviewer comments, the subjects, the brief description of the materials, and the reviewers' quotes creates the richness and integrity of these reviews. It is strongly recommended that educators read both pages of each review in order to take in the full flavor of the materials. The "Reviews in Brief" do not contain a substantial teacher's guide and are therefore presented in a shorter format. These resources were reviewed using the same rigorous guidelines as the longer reviews. Click on the resource titles to see a brief description of each curriculum or resource and the review summary [PDF]

The EE Collection - Volume 3

The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators
Volume 3

The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators (updated 2004) is designed to help educators find curricula, multimedia resources, and other educational materials that can enhance teaching environmental education in a variety of settings. It is hoped that this resource guide will assist educators as they plan, develop, and implement creative and effective environmental education programs. Curriculum guides and other educational materials included in The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators were evaluated by teams of classrooms teachers, content experts, and environmental educators. The materials were evaluated using the Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence developed by the North American Association for Environmental Education. The write-ups of the materials included in this document were designed to point out the variety of factors an educators may wish to consider when deciding which materials are most appropriate for a particular group of students and how those materials might be used most effectively.

Table of Contents

The Environmental Education Collection: A Review of Resources for Educators
The synergy between the various parts of the primary Reviews -- the summary of reviewer comments, the subjects, the brief description of the materials, and the reviewers' quotes - creates the richness and integrity of these reviews. It is strongly recommended that educators read both pages of each review in order to take in the full flavor of the materials. The "Reviews in Brief" do not contain a substantial teacher's guide and are therefore presented in a shorter format. These resources were reviewed using the same rigorous guidelines as the longer reviews. Click on the resource titles to see a brief description of each curriculum or resource and the review summary [PDF].

The Biodiversity Collection

The Biodiversity Collection is designed to help educators find outstanding curricula, multimedia resources, and other educational materials that can enhance biodiversity teaching in a variety of settings. The Biodiversity Collection was produced by World Wildlife Fund in association with the North American Association for Environmental Education with support from Eastman Kodak Company and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
The Curriculum materials included in The Biodiversity Collection: Resources for Educators were reviewed and evaluated by teams of classrooms teachers, content experts, and environmental educators.? The materials were evaluated using the Environmental Education Materials: Guidelines for Excellence developed by the North American Association for Environmental Education.
The resources reviewed in this guide provide dozens of ideas for developing lesson plans, units, and courses that focus on biodiversity. These are some of the best resources available today for developing exemplary environmental education programs. The Biodiversity Collection is a part of a series of environmental education resource guides designed to help educators find exemplary teaching materials. Other guides include The Environmental Education Collection:Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3, which are compendia of general environmental education resources on a variety of topics. Table of Contents

The Biodiversity Collection: Resources for Educators

The collecton consists of two major parts. The first part highlights 47 of the best supplementary curricula evaluated by reviewers focusing on some aspect of biodiversity. The second part includes an annotated bibliography that features general background information, children's books and magazines, multimedia resources, web sites, and a variety of other resources focused on biodiversity issues. Although these materials were also reviewed, the review was not as extensive and the goal was to include a variety of high-quality supplementary materials that would enhance a biodiversity unit or program.
Click on the resource titles to see a brief description of each curriculum or resource and the review summary [PDF]

The Guidelines for the Preparation and Professional Development of Environmental Educators

The Guidelines are recommendations about the basic knowledge and abilities educators need to provide high-quality environmental education. The guidelines are designed to apply:

Within the context of pre-service teacher education programs and environmental education courses offered to students with varied backgrounds such as environmental studies, geography, liberal studies, or natural resources;

To the professional development of educators who will work in both formal and nonformal educational settings, offering programs at the pre-kindergarten through 12th grade levels; and

To full-time environmental educators as well as for those for whom environmental education is just one of their responsibilities.

Environmental educators work in a variety of settings, at a variety of jobs. They teach in public and private classrooms, and lead activities for children and adults at nonformal educational institutions such as nature centers, zoos, museums, and parks. They teach at universities in education, environmental studies, geography, natural resource, and science programs. They develop curriculum materials and administer national, state, and local programs. Regardless of the setting, Guidelines for the Preparation and Professional Development of Environmental Educators outlines the experiences and learning that will help them deliver instruction that effectively fosters environmental literacy.

This document presents an ambitious overview of the abilities and knowledge of a well-prepared environmental educator. The guidelines, organized into six themes, provide a mechanism for gauging the quality of pre-service and in-service preparation programs and the abilities of environmental educators working in the field. Instead of offering fixed rules, these guidelines suggest a broad vision—a goal to work toward and a guide for professional and programmatic development.